Guarded
by KamikazeeKennedy
Summary: re-write of the plotline for Young Badlands from Bunny's perspective with backstory and zombies. Unsure of how pairings are gonna go right now.


Chapter One

_I don't want to be seen as a vulnerable person._

Logan found me outside sitting under a street light within the safety walls of the city. My eye was blackened and makeup running down my face. He always told me I was beautiful when I cried. He said it to make me smile, I know. This kept happening though and every time he saw me like this it felt like the first time. I just wanted to hide or be brave and fight back. He hated seeing me like this. I could see it in his eyes, pain, anger, and love. I never had to tell him when I was upset, he always just knew. He protected me from the first day I met him.

My dad had always been aggressive towards me, but it had gotten worse after my mother was killed a year ago when the world started going to hell. I've seen so many movies about zombies that I never really expected it to ever come to life or even be my life. It's strange though, the world hasn't completely lost its shit. Somehow there is still order. Of course, there are huge walls and no traveling for non-military personnel anymore, but we're safe. Or I guess as safe as we can be anyway. There's still crime and violence over money and power. I guess I thought if zombies were to ever 'take over' maybe people would be more compassionate? I guess that's a little ridiculous to think of.

I was with my mom when she died.

_"I'm scared of him, mom." I cried. I was in pain from the night before. My father threw me into a table causing very painful bruises down my ribcage._

_ "I know, sweetie. I am so sorry." She cried with me. Her arms wrapped around me tightly. We sat like that for a few minutes just crying. Her left eye was bruised. I wasn't his only victim from the night before. I saw her look up at the clock. It was a little after 1 in the afternoon. She had a look on her face that I wasn't sure how to read._

_ "What is it, mom?" I wiped my face and tried to compose myself. _

_ "Pack your stuff." She whispered in a gentle yet demanding voice._

_ "What?" I was in disbelief._

_ "It's one thing if he hurts me, but I can't let him hurt you anymore. Pack your stuff. Pack everything that is important. We'll fill the car with our stuff, I'll go by the bank and drain the bank account and we'll just go. And when we get to where we are going I'll figure out how to divorce your father and get a restraining order so he can never hurt you or me again." She got off the couch and went upstairs to pack. _

_ I didn't waste any time. I ran upstairs and packed everything I could. I had four large suitcases so I packed what I could. My clothes filled two and a half of the suitcases very quickly. My shoes finished up the third suitcase. The last suitcase I filled with things that meant a lot to me. There was a teddy bear from when I was younger that I could never bring myself to let go of so he went in first. There was a photo album of pictures of my mom and I when we weren't covered in bruises. It's sad to say but there's only one album because there weren't many times when we hadn't been beaten by him. I threw a few more things in the suitcase and zipped it up. It was nearly two in the afternoon. My father got off work at six in the evening. We had four hours to pack the car, go by the bank and get out of town._

_ "Mom, I'm finished packing. Do you need help?" I called to her while taking my things downstairs._

_ "No, I just finished as well." I saw her turn the corner and begin bringing her stuff downstairs. We carried our things outside and quickly packed the car. I walked back inside to grab my jacket. I walked back in my room and stood in front of my mirror and looked at myself. _

_ "We're leaving." I whispered to myself. It was actually resonating in my head as a reality. "No more bruises. No more cuts. No more broken glass." I took a deep breath and smiled. I remember the way I smiled in the mirror. I'd never seen myself smile like that. I finally felt like I would be free. Like my mom and I could both finally be free. I grabbed my jacket and left my room for what I hoped would be the last time. _

_ My mother was already in the car and on her phone searching and planning our way out of the town. I got in the car and fastened my seatbelt. I looked at the house I had lived in my whole life. From the outside it was beautiful and you wouldn't expect anything but happiness on the inside. It was clean, there were flowers around the outside during the warmer months, and it genuinely had the feeling of a warm hug. It's too bad that it didn't feel the same when you stepped inside. The appearance of the inside still gave the impression of happiness and sometimes even I believed it was happy, but when you're constantly being punished for things you aren't sure of sometimes you make up lies to hide the truth and just pretend like everything really is okay even when it isn't._

_ "Where are we going?" I shook myself out of the pained thoughts. I looked to my mother who was still searching for us a place to go. _

_ "North." She said. "For now, just north. I don't know where, we'll figure it out." She put her phone down. "We're going by the bank first. After that we'll get something to eat and leave. I'm sorry, honey, but for now we're both going to have to remove the sim cards from our phones so your father can't track us down. Don't tell anyone where we are going." I nodded._

_ We backed out of the driveway and drove to the bank. I went inside the bank with my mother to withdraw all the money out of my bank account as well. _

_ "How much would you like to withdraw?" The teller asked me. _

_ "All of it." I replied. _

_ "Withdrawing everything from your account will automatically close it." He responded._

_ "It'll alert your father. Leave like $5 in it." My mother instructed me. _

_ "Okay, what she said." I looked back to him. He nodded. He handed me $973 and some change._

_ "And how can I help you, ma'am?" The teller looked at my mother. _

_ "I need to make a withdrawl as well." She handed him her ID._

_ "Alright. How much?" He asked, pulling up her account._

_ "$40,000." My eyes widened. The teller nodded._

_ "That's a lot of money." I whispered. My mother nervously nodded. We had to wait a few minutes for them to gather up the money since it was such a large amount. "How much does that leave him?"_

_ "A little over $60,000, but they'll notify him of anything over $41,000 so that's as much as I can take." They gave us our money and we left._

_ My mother hid the money in the car in a secret compartment under her seat. My stomach was in knots. I felt like something terrible was about to happen but I wrote it off as just stress and tried to relax. My mother could sense I was upset, so without asking me, she drove us to my favorite diner. I didn't want to get out of the car when we got there though. I couldn't explain it but I just felt off. _

_ "I'll go inside and get us something and we'll just go ahead and hit the road, okay?" Her voice was comforting. I smiled and nodded. _

_ "Hey, mom?" I was feeling really emotional and tried to hold back tears. She looked at me, lovingly and reached to hug me. "I love you." I whispered._

_ "I love you, too, sweetie. Don't cry. Everything will be okay. We're going to get out of here and we'll be okay together." She was so strong. Or at least strong for me. She let go of me and went inside the diner. A few minutes passed. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but I still had that terrible feeling. I felt relieved when I saw her walking back to the car. She climbed in and handed me food. I had a chicken breast sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and a little mayonnaise with kettle chips and a bottle of water. _

_ "I know you aren't feeling very good, so I got you this too." She handed me a chocolate lava muffin. Anytime I would ever get upset my mom would always bring me these home. They're pretty much just chocolate muffins but they have this chocolate-y pudding type stuff on the inside that just make them the perfect sad food. _

_ "Aww, thank you!" I smiled. For a long time I had a lot of negative feelings towards my mother because I couldn't understand how she would let my dad hurt me or herself. I didn't understand for a long time until about a year ago when I was sixteen. Then I finally understood that she was just scared and not sure of what to do. I guess I couldn't really blame her. I was scared too. After that we started getting closer and now there is no one in the world I love as much as my mom. _

_ So then we drove. I took the sim cards and batteries out of both of our phones and threw them in the glove box. After a few hours it had gotten dark. We were on the highway. The traffic seemed to slow down until it finally stopped. Up ahead we could see an accident._

_ "Shit." My mother swore under her breath. I squinted and could see that cars were being permitted to turn around on the highway and return in the direction they came. Having no choice, we slowly pulled forward to the turn around and saw a police officer talking to people before they turned around. Finally, it was our turn to speak to him._

_ "Sorry, ma'am, but you're gonna need to turn around and go back." His voice was shaken. My mother looked at him confused._

_ "I don't understand, what's going on?" My mother asked confused._

_ "Ma'am, I don't really know. Further up this road there are things. Bad things. You've got to turn around and get out of here." He vaguely warned._

_ "What kind of bad things? There are bad things where we came from, what could be worse?" My mom tried to reason._

_ "They-" The officer tried to stay composed. I could see sweat dripping down his face and then noticed he was bleeding. Suddenly he fainted. My mother was a nurse so she immediately jumped out of the car to help him. A guy around my age came running from another vehicle that appeared to have broken down. _

_ My mother grabbed the first aid kit from the back of the backseat and gestured for the guy to help her move him into the light. She got down on her knees over him and pulled open his shirt to expose a bite wound on his stomach. She was confused and startled, but she placed a bandage over his wound to soak up some of the blood. She turned her head for a second before he grabbed her and pulled her down, biting into her neck. She screamed. My eyes widened as I was paralyzed from fear. The officer was on his feet and my mother on the ground bleeding out very quickly. The guy punched him, knocking him down, but he was quickly back on his feet and in a position ready to pounce. The guy noticed his gun was still in his belt and lunged at him, knocking him down and taking his gun. Without a flinch he shot the officer in the head. He looked down to my mother who could barely breathe. I got out of the car and rushed to her side._

_ "Mom! No, please don't die. Please don't die." I begged. Tears were pouring down my face. Her hand reached up to me and touched my face. I placed my hand over hers._

_ "I love you." She whispered. She looked at the guy beside me. "Take care of her."_

_ She stopped breathing. I fell backwards and his arms found me. I didn't know who he was and he didn't know me either. _

_ "I'll protect you." He whispered. His voice soothed me and I curled up against him for a second. I didn't even know his name and yet he comforted me. Then we heard screams. He jumped up and saw people being torn out of cars behind us. He grabbed me. "Get in the car. We have to go, now!"_

_ We got into the car, the tires scorched the road and we took off. Shock took over and I stopped crying. We didn't speak for at least an hour of the ride. I didn't know where we were going or if I would even be safe with him. I guess it didn't matter anymore._

_ "What is your name?" I asked him. _

_ "Logan."_

_ It turned out that Logan and I actually lived in the same city so that's where we headed._

My father blames me for my mother's death. I guess it would be ridiculous to think that someone who was physically abusive towards their family would actually take responsibility and recognize that he was the reason why we were leaving. He tells me I'm selfish for trying to leave and had it not been for our 'grand escape' that she would still be alive. Maybe. But if that thing hadn't killed her he probably would have.

Logan lifted himself off the ground and started walking quickly to my house.

"Logan?" I called after him, picking myself up and hurrying after him. I chased him to my house, but he was faster than me. As soon as I got inside I saw my father on the floor with his head beat in. He wasn't breathing. I should be sad. I think in some sense though this is an ironic sort of justice. He always beat my mom and I and that's how he ended up dying.

"He will NEVER hurt you again." Logan wiped tears from his face. "We have to go." Even with the world crawling with zombies, murder was still for some reason illegal. We really had to go. Upon exiting the house I stopped him and hugged him.

"Thank you." I whispered.

**So, zombies. I like zombies. I also like Young Badlands. I don't really want to write anything that can be remotely close to how the storyline might actually go so zombies seemed like a fun approach since I thoroughly enjoy horror/romance. This series has been out for like… a week? I haven't really seen any fanfiction or anything for it yet, but I'm hoping I'm not the only person interested in reading/writing it. I thought maybe I would write from Bunny's perspective.. I feel like I can empathize most with her so keeping her character seemed the most appropriate for me. Anyway, if you liked it and want me to continue making this into a full story please comment. **


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